At 44-8, Spurs won’t settle for just winning

PHILADELPHIA — For Spurs coach Gregg Popovich, the first 52 games of the season have played like his own personal Groundhog Day.

Every night, he dispatches the same starting lineup, uses mostly the same rotation, calls mostly the same plays, usually watches another Spurs’ victory, then goes home and eats dinner. Ho hum.

“It’s like I don’t have a job anymore,” Popovich said.

Popovich, it seems, has discovered a downside to a 44-8 record.

“It’s boring as hell,” he said.

The upside? Popovich says the Spurs’ apparent shift to autopilot has freed up more time for his real passions.

“Wine and reading,” Popovich said.

And if you believe any of that, Popovich has a bridge in wine country to sell you. Players say Popovich has been just as engaged this season as last, when he started 25 different lineups and the Spurs had to struggle just to make the playoffs as a seventh seed.

As the Spurs’ record has risen, so have the stakes, so have the expectations, and so has Popovich’s standard.

“He won’t let us settle,” said guard George Hill, whose team resumes its rodeo trip tonight at Philadelphia. “He wants us to be the best team we can.”

It’s why Popovich considers the Spurs’ past two victories, 100-89 at Detroit and 111-100 at Toronto, to be less than satisfying.

Last year at this time, when the Spurs were 31-21 and seventh in the Western Conference, simply getting wins — by any means — was the most important thing. When the Spurs went on to become, in the somewhat sarcastic words of small forward Richard Jefferson, “the worst 50-win team in NBA history,” it felt like something of an accomplishment.

As this season has ventured into special territory — only six other NBA teams have gone at least 44-8 after 52 games, and all of them went on to win a championship — the Spurs have become less concerned with winning in and of itself, and more interested in how they arrive at the “W.”

“Right now, we’re playing as if we’re still trying to get in the playoffs,” Hill said. “That’s the mentality you have to have.”

It’s a mentality that filters from the top. Though the Spurs lead the West by seven games, and the entire NBA by 5??1/2, Popovich refuses to allow his team to be called the best in the league.

Instead of wine and reading, he is using his newfound downtime to carp on the Spurs’ defense, which has often been spotty.

“Just because we’ve got the best record doesn’t mean we have the best team,” Popovich said. “To be that, we definitely have to get better defensively.”

Each of the past four NBA champions has finished the season ranked in the top six in field-goal percentage defense. The Spurs are 12th, allowing 45.2 percent.

If the purpose of the rodeo trip is to forge a defensive identity that could carry the Spurs to a fifth title, they’ve received mixed marks so far.

In the two games that opened the eastern leg of this trip, the Spurs played two quarters of defense at Detroit and one at Toronto, which turned out to be enough.

“We can’t be satisfied,” point guard Tony Parker said. “You want to improve. That’s the goal every night. We don’t want to waste this record.”

Tonight, as the Spurs face a sub-.500 76ers team that always has been a bad athletic matchup for them and always has given them trouble in Philadelphia, defense again will be the focus.

“Usually, we’re moaning and groaning about offense,” Popovich said. “Now we’re moaning and groaning about defense. It’s been a schizophrenic season in that sense.”

Perhaps Popovich should be thankful for his team’s occasional defensive slippage. At least it gives him something to do.